Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Property rights vs. UN Agenda 21

ICLEI attendees dismayed over growing grassroots opposition

 

(Bonn) For years Green campaigners have been quietly waging an effective campaign to advance the more radical aspects of the UN’s Agenda 21 at the local government level, but the stealth phase of their effort appears to be over.

Delegates gathered for the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) in Bonn, Germany, are expressing anxiety over the effectiveness of free market and property rights groups like CFACT and the Tea Party in calling attention to their activities. By sounding the alarm at city planning meetings, in the media, the internet and at grassroots rallies, property rights activists are successfully hampering ICLEI’s UN Agenda 21 program for local government and, as CFACT staff has learned, these challenges have them worried.

CFACT attended a reception for ICLEI hosted by the city of Bonn at the Bonn Art Museum, where ICLEI members shared with CFACT staff their frustration with conservative legislators, free market and Tea Party activists, and even Glenn Beck. Michael Schmitz, Executive Director of ICLEI USA, admitted to CFACT staff members that while the council has been able to get “roughly 450 communities” in America to join ICLEI, they are predominantly in liberal states. In more conservative states where the Tea Party is active, he confessed and lamented their inability to implement UN sustainable development programs.

ICLEI was formed in 1990 for the purpose of promoting the UN’s vision of “sustainable development” as embodied in a document called Agenda 21. It now counts more than 1200 cities in its membership, the vast majority of whom use taxpayer money to pay membership dues to participate. The ICLEI conference in Bonn was coordinated with a meeting of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, as well as the UN’s Climate Change Conference next week, also in Bonn.

ICLEI members from other countries also expressed their frustration with the growing opposition. Beth McLachlan, Senior Sustainability Officer for the City of Melbourne, Australia, and former employee at the Australian EPA, said that critics of climate change policies, headed by Tony Abbott, appear to be headed for electoral victory in her country. The political shift away from Julia Gillard’s global warming policies is why she left the Australian EPA, she confided. If the climate realists succeed on the national stage, she sees her mission as “carrying on the fight” at the local level. “This reveals the persistence and determination of ICLEI,” said CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker, “to use unelected, local government bureaucrats to implement the most radical and unpopular aspects UN Agenda 21 policies regardless of the political winds.”

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